Predicting the Geographical Landscape of United States born professional hockey players in the year 2025. Gary A. Parkhurst, GISP Advisor: Dr. Todd Bacastow.

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Presentation on theme: "Predicting the Geographical Landscape of United States born professional hockey players in the year 2025. Gary A. Parkhurst, GISP Advisor: Dr. Todd Bacastow."— Presentation transcript:

1 Predicting the Geographical Landscape of United States born professional hockey players in the year 2025.Gary A. Parkhurst, GISPAdvisor: Dr. Todd BacastowGEOG 596A: Capstone Peer ReviewSpring 2014

5 Background – Professional HockeyProfessional Players: For the purpose of this study, a professional player is defined as any player who played at least one game in one of the five professional leagues in North America.Professional Leagues: There are 5 professional hockey leagues in North America.National Hockey League (NHL)American Hockey League (AHL)East Coast Hockey League (ECHL)Central Hockey League (CHL)Southern Professional Hockey League (SPHL)Total of 100 Professional teams across all 5 leagues2,843 players played Professional Hockey during the 2013/2014 seasonMiracle on Ice: The 1980 United States Olympic Team and their improbable gold medal introduced ice hockey to Non-Traditional states across America.1980 United States Olympic Team2014 United States Olympic TeamMinnesota - 60%Massachusetts – 20%Michigan – 10%Wisconsin – 10%Minnesota - 32%New York – 24%Michigan – 12%Wisconsin – 12%Connecticut – 8%New Jersey – 8%Missouri – 4%

7 AssumptionsIncrease of Players - Assume you will see an increase in the number of U.S. born hockey players from non-traditional hockey states (like Florida) in the next decade.Culture Change - Assume the culture has been transplanted to warm weather states from parents that have relocated from northern states.Demographics – Ice Hockey is a very expensive sport to develop elite players. Demographics can be used to study areas that have developed elite players in the past and apply that to predict similar areas in non-traditional markets .

8 Athlete Demographic DataData DiscoveryLiterature ReviewIdentify previous studiesNewspaper ArticlesMagazine ArticlesPolling DataFlorida hockey parents poll to determine place of birth and transplantation of hockey cultureAthlete Demographic DataProfessional Hockey players place of birth25 year NHL draft history of U.S. born selected playersMiscellaneous DataCensus Data for anomaly areasU.S. Ice Rink databaseData DiscoveryLiterature ReviewMiscellaneous DataAthlete Demographic DataPolling DataKey to my project is the data discovery stage. There is no established database of information that I can leverage to save time. Almost everything has to be created from scratch.

9 Data – Literature ReviewThis article is printed in the April/May 2014 USA Hockey Magazine. USA Hockey sponsors “Try Hockey For Free” days around the country to attract youth to the sport. A total of 28,446 kids in the United State took advantage of this USA Hockey initiative.USA Hockey publishes a magazine for all of their registered members. The magazine is published every two months and profiles stories related to USA youth hockey while also promoting participation.Article in the Sun Sentinel profiling a youth hockey player who was potentially making history in being the first born and raised Floridian ice hockey player to be selected in the National Hockey League draft. I found multiple articles similar to this in the past few years.Florida geographic parents poll

10 Data – Hockey “Culture” PollGoal: To determine if the “hockey” culture from the Northern states has permeated to the Southern states by way of parents of youth hockey players.Find website to design and publish a poll while also tracking the resultsDistribute through social media and regional hockey directors to parents of youth hockey players in FloridaGather, Analyze and Visualize results

11 Data – Athlete Demographics2013 Draft Results – 1st Round (Picks 1-16)Collect & Analyze Athlete Demographic informationCollect birth place information for all players that played at least one game in one of the five professional ice hockey leagues in North America during the 2013/14 season.Collect all NHL draft information for the last years. This information is important to perform a temporal analysis

12 Listing of all Ice Rinks located within the United States.Data – MiscellaneousCollect & Analyze Miscellaneous InformationIdentify the location of all ice rinks within the United States. These will need to be geolocated. Normalize ice rinks by population.Collect Census data for anomaly/call out areas identified through research. I will most likely need to use zip codes since I do not have street level addresses.Identify a dependable batch geocoder.Listing of all Ice Rinks located within the United States.

14 Methodology- Identify & Investigate AnomaliesCaliforniaFlorida2000 – 2013NHL Draft Density(Notional Data)QuestionsCan Census data be used to find demographic data that contributes to these anomalies?Do like conditions exist in both traditional and non-traditional areas?Has an NHL team in this market recently won a Stanley Cup? Has the team consistently won producing a culture of winning in the city resulting in attracting new fans to the game?Have external factors such as the influence of USA Hockey contributed to growth with programs aimed at growing the game?

15 Methodology – Point Pattern Analysis (PPA)ClusteredDispersedRandomPoint Pattern Analysis of selected areasUse Nearest Neighbor Distance Analysis to determine the spatial arrangement of points within the defined area of study.Identify whether the points are Clustered, Dispersed, or Random.Use Monte Carlo method to randomly generate iterations of patterns in order to assess our observed phenomena.Use PPA for a comparison analysis on both traditional areas (Minnesota) and non-traditional areas. (Florida)

16 Anticipated ResultsExpect to see a rise in players from warm weather states making an impact on professional hockey and major division I ice hockey programs.Expect to see that the northern culture of ice hockey has been transplanted to southern “warm” weather states by parents of current youth ice hockey players.Expect that the ice rink normalized by population will show that there is more ice available for northern kids.Expect that using buffers around cities that have won a Stanley Cup is not a good indicator for an increase in production of professional ice hockey players from that area.Expect the Point Pattern Analysis to demonstrate clustering around established ice hockey rinks.